Here goes! My "Akwaaba" to Ghana

Well after saying I wasn't going to blog while in Africa, I gave in. Let's be honest I'm not very good at staying in touch when I'm home and it's been rough here too so I might as well inform everyone at once! So far, things have been amazing here. The first two weeks we had an orientation program set up for us through UC and the University here that was basically camp for a week (my favorite) but honestly it was the best way possible to get introduced to life here. Eight Ghanaian students (all volunteers) essentially gave up their lives to lead us through this crazy country for two weeks and they couldn't have been any more generous. First off they are all so funny and friendly but apart from that their devotion to this job is unreal! I mean I was trying to imagine myself in their position having to guide a bunch of whinny Americans around and I would have quit after the first five minutes. They showed us around campus, the city of Accra, helped us sign up for classes, tell us where to eat, where we shouldn't go because it's dangerous, who to look out for, how to get by speaking twi. And on top of it all they are our friends and come hang out with us from time to time.
Monday was the "first" day of classes but in Ghana that means that classes might happen, or they might be tomorrow maybe next week, who really know?! And good luck trying to find out where to sign up for the course. Fortunately the majority of my classes actually happened this week but when I asked someone on monday morning where my geology class was, I got laughed at because apparently no one goes to class on the first day. Not to mention a lot of the departments didn't even post the times of their lectures until yesterday and I still don't know when one of my classes is. The other day when I was trying to sign up for a music class, I got directed to about three different doors before finding the right one.
Dance 205, Introduction to Traditional Dance, might just be the best class I will ever take. It's taught by a man named Oh! Nii, (yes punctuation included). He's an old man who demands respect by all (we can quite figure out why, one night he showed up in tribal attire and another night he was wearing sweats and a T-shirt). He always enters the room cryptically with a cane and then ditches it a minute in and starts boogying. We dance to live drummers and around 10 dance TAs help us out, I have never seen anyone move their body like that, Ghanaians can shake it and with passion! For an hour an a half twice a week we learn Ghanaian traditional dances but mostly just get to forget about everything and have a great time being awkward Americans trying to move our hips and feet in sync, not too easy. And luckily for me, my skin tone really helps me blend in around here and it's rare that I get stared at an called "Obruni!" (their term for foreigner). More to come I'm off to dance class in a bit!